Using a copy stand and trouble with reflections...

[kdryan]

The barn doors on the Tota's are casting hard shadows, and you have them aimed upward...you can see on the wall the utter mess that those four lights are creating, right?

Try TWO lights, not four. And aim them downward, not upward. You are creating a total mess by using four separate light sources. I have used Lowell's Tota lights before, and HATED them. They are the closest thing to a pinpoint light source ever created during their time. They are AWFUL things unles you have a need for blinding, hot, bright light that will be diffused, and goes all over hell.

You need to diffuse the lights, and remove two of them!!! Two x 750 and two x 500 is wayyyyyyy more light than required. In addition to the polarizing sheets, consider some serious diffusion material, to cut the specularity down. What Tota's give you is a loooooong, wide-profile, intensely specular light source! With four of them, you are just totally,totally asking for problems. Of the thousands and thousands of bumps on the lustre or pearl surface photo paper, you are GOING to get bright, pin-point specular highlights" ie, the white dots, because the lights themselves are very specular when used without heavy diffusion material in front of them.

I've had the lights pointed down and I agree it's too much. I'll try the two 500w lamps and rigging something up to diffuse them. Thanks for the input!

 

[kdryan]

Out of curiosity, why not scan these? That would make life a lot simpler...

Go up about five posts, click on the picture, then click again, then one more time....

Whoops... missed that! :er: That's an oddball; I've never seen anything like that before. It certainly doesn't look like a standard paper texture at all. Is there any chance that these are NOT the original prints? Could they have been either copied or re-printed later on? It looks almost like half-toning. Can you actually feel this with your finger? Looking at this, lighting wise, I think you should try lighting directly from above with a very diffused light source, or cross-lighting in which case you'll need to make sure that your light angles are exactly equal and again, well diffused.

They're the originals...

 

[Derrel]

I took a commercial photography class at a community college in the 1980's, and then another one at another community college about five years later in another city; in both classes, we were forced to use Lowell Omni Light and Lowel Tota Light units, which back in those days, were pretty popular with old-school commercial photo teachers who preached using large diffusion scrims, as well as wire scrims...I found the lights to be incredibly difficult to work with compared with my then brand-new Speedotron flash stuff. The Tota Lights have that intensely, blindingly bright quartz light...it's just...a major part of their nature. The light's filament is just sooooooooo blindingly bright that anything at all reflective shows a specular highlight. I also found that the little flappy doors cast pretty intense shadows as well...my impression is that these lights were really engineered to be used behind large 4x 6 foot diffusion scrims, and the door flaps to be used to flag off the light and confine it to the 4x6 foot diffusion panel's rear area.

 

[Light Guru]

aim them downward, not upward.

Yup aim them down. I use a copy stand daily at work with a phase one digital back and you want lots of light pointed directly at the table.

 

[Big Mike]

I'd try using only two lights, pointed down at the piece and maybe placed further away (to the sides).

 

[kdryan]

Ok, at the end of seven innings of play, here is what we have. I think the photographer's two best friends are JoAnne fabrics and Home Depot. I made the diffusers from a fabric shower curtain, left the glass open and added a polarizing filter. I am also only using the bottom two lights.



Here are the results. If you look at it at full res, you can still see the texture:



After a bit of playing in Lr and Ps, I did this. Some detail was lost but I still would call this a satisfactory result:



I am happy with that, but I get this also. The transitions between the different shades of black on the curtains are sharp instead of blending together.:



Can anyone tell me what this is and how to fix it?